In complex deals today, you’re selling into a moving system of stakeholders, not a single buyer. Buying groups are expanding while executive and stakeholder turnover rises. Major decisions often involve double-digit stakeholders across functions, regions, and levels. Unfortunately, many commercial models still behave as if one champion is enough.
In must-win deals and strategic accounts, a familiar pattern shows up:
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One senior champion carries most of the relationship weight
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One or two day-to-day contacts control access and information
- A broader stakeholder group exists in theory, but only a few are actively engaged
When that champion leaves, gets reassigned, or loses influence, deals stall or die. Even when opportunities survive, the sales cycle resets and the business case is reopened. Over time, that fragility threatens your broader revenue, not just individual pursuits.
The 2026 Outlook in Gartner's Chief Sales Officer Quarterly (3Q25) points to what sales leaders already see every quarter: C-suite churn and stakeholder turnover are major revenue threats.
Your best defense is to intentionally expand your stakeholder footprint early, long before turnover hits.
Many teams talk about multi-threading—building and sustaining meaningful relationships with multiple stakeholders in the account—but few treat it as a standard, measurable discipline. Three questions bring the real risk into focus:
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How many of your must-win opportunities are effectively single-threaded today?
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If your top sponsor in each of your three largest deals left tomorrow, how confident would you feel that you could keep those deals on track
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Where do your teams have a clear approach to mapping, engaging, and aligning a full buying group versus relying on a few strong relationships?
These questions shift the conversation from, “Do we have a good champion?”to, “Do we have a resilient coalition that can withstand change?”
The Revenue Risk of Single-Thread Dependence
Single-relationship dependence in key pursuits creates real revenue risk. Forrester's State of Business Buying 2024 research shows that B2B purchases involve around 13 stakeholders, and nearly nine in 10 deals stretch across multiple departments. Yet, sellers often:
- Focus outreach narrowly on one champion
- Tailor messages to a single persona instead of the group’s shared priorities
- Miss opportunities to align value narratives across functions
Single-threaded relationships create fragility. Multi-threaded engagement creates resilience.
Winning in 2026 and beyond means treating stakeholder breadth as a core sales discipline from day one.
Multi-Threading: Your Defense Against Volatility
Reducing stakeholder risk requires multi-threading. The best sellers use individual champions as entry points into the broader buying group, orchestrating alignment among diverse stakeholders. They build coalitions that withstand personnel changes, keep deals moving through transitions, and preserve outcomes even when key sponsors move on.
3 Strategies to Expand and Protect Your Stakeholder Footprint
1. Map Your Buying Group Before Changes Hit
Start by mapping the account early. Identify decision-makers, influencers, and gatekeepers at every level: executive, functional, and operational. Visualize their priorities and relationships to spot gaps in your coverage.
Build a stakeholder map showing alignment, influence, and advocacy levels for each contact. Update it regularly as personnel and power structures evolve.
A living stakeholder map is your insurance against turnover.
2. Tailor Value to 3 Critical Levels
Winning sellers tailor value narratives to Resonate, Differentiate, and Substantiate, and they do it at every level of the buying ecosystem:
- Individual level: Address personal motivations and success measures. What does this mean for their role, their team, their career?
- Buying group level: Align value around shared business challenges to create cross-functional consensus. What unites finance, operations, and IT?
- Organizational level: Connect outcomes to enterprise-wide goals and strategic priorities. How does this advance the company’s broader mission?
This multi-level approach transforms stakeholder engagement, turning fragmented conversations into aligned, value-reinforcing narratives across the organization.
3. Build Sponsorship Depth and Breadth
Strong deals have both breadth and depth of sponsorship across functions and up and down the org chart. Engage frontline advocates, mid-level operators, and senior decision-makers simultaneously. Map relationships across departments to eliminate single points of failure.
Sellers who tailor their approach to each stakeholder, from CFOs seeking ROI to COOs seeking efficiency, evolve to enterprise value selling.
Depth protects deal continuity when sponsors change. Breadth protects the account.
Example: Multi-Threading in Action
A global consulting firm was pursuing a strategic transformation deal with a large manufacturing client. The relationship centered on one senior sponsor, the COO. When that executive left mid-cycle, the deal froze.
Instead of starting over, the pursuit team got deliberate about expanding their stakeholder base by:
- Mapping the buying group across finance, operations, and HR
- Reframing value messages to each function’s priorities
- Reactivating conversations using proof points tied to shared business outcomes
Within weeks, they reengaged two additional executive sponsors and built a coalition of mid-level supporters who maintained momentum through the transition.
The team closed the deal a few months later with a different executive sponsor than the one who initiated it. Stakeholder breadth turned a potential loss into a strategic win.
Protecting Your Most Important Opportunities
Your largest pursuits and most strategic accounts can’t afford single-thread vulnerability. These opportunities demand deliberate, multi-threaded stakeholder engagement from the first conversation through long-term account expansion.
Buyer Engagement That Lasts
Resilient growth depends on how well you connect.
At RAIN Group, we help organizations strengthen deal resilience through systematic stakeholder engagement. By expanding stakeholder footprints early and tailoring value to individuals, buying groups, and organizations, your team can maintain momentum through turnover, accelerate consensus, and build accounts that grow regardless of personnel changes.
